


there's no time like the present

by falloutmars



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Fluff, betty and jughead technically havent met yet until this, bettys a stressed student who bakes in the middle of the night, its cute i promise, oh no! it's yet another meet cute, pajamas!, so they share a floor in student accommodation so there's a communal kitchen, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutmars/pseuds/falloutmars
Summary: Betty Cooper. Grade A student, Grade A avoider of problems, Grade A baker. Combine everything and you get a stressed student trying to avoid writing yet another essay by baking.The catch? It’s 3 a.m..–or, Betty meets her flatmates in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Background Veronica Lodge/Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 22
Kudos: 70
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	there's no time like the present

**Author's Note:**

> hello! here is yet another meet cute! oops! 
> 
> (please enjoy. i love writing meet cutes)

Betty Cooper. Grade A student, Grade A avoider of problems, Grade A baker. Combine everything and you get a stressed student trying to avoid writing yet another essay by baking. 

The catch? It’s 3 a.m.. 

Arguably, that would be fine if she lived alone or with someone who understood her, uh, _problem_. But she doesn’t. She lives in student accommodation with a communal kitchen shared between at least five other people, three of them who she’s never seen before and she swears doesn’t know what a kitchen is, one who she sees making ramen noodles in the microwave first thing in place of breakfast, and one who she’s met once but actively calls her by the wrong name because she told her she was making tea wrong. That’s Veronica. She’s nice enough, but the name thing really gets to Betty.

Considering everything, surely baking cookies at 3 a.m. is fine, right? 

Well, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. 

It’s just, everything is stressful. Being a college student is stressful. There’s so much goddamn work and everyone expects her to get perfect grades all the time. Sometimes she just _can’t_. And right now, she doesn’t have the time to write a second essay on the ethics of journalism in case her first wasn’t good enough even though everything in her is telling her – in a voice that distinctly sounds like her mom – that she should because that first essay is truly shit. 

Seriously, does one shit grade matter? She’s pretty certain it doesn’t even count towards anything.

On top of that, she has two other essays due that she hasn’t even started and a group project with a group of people who definitely don’t care about the class or her for that matter, so that’s yet another thing she has to do. 

It’s all too much. And it’s so overwhelming that even the thought of sleep makes her want to cry. All that uninterrupted thinking time… it’s a hard no from her.

So she does what she does best: bake. It works as a stress reliever, a distraction from her work, and she gets cookies out of it. Triple chocolate because is there any other way to go? A decadent chocolate dough, white and milk chocolate chips scooped thick onto a hot baking tray to get that crispy bottom and gooey center. It’s a recipe that’s taken years to perfect, and now she’s more stressed than ever, she thinks she’s finally gotten it down. 

Often, her stress-induced baking helps get rid of a craving, too. So win-win, right?

Well, one Saturday night, she gets more than she bargained for.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary on this particular night. She’s still stressed, still working on that ethics of journalism essay, still _avoiding_ said essay, still unable to fall asleep. She heard some of the others on her floor go out for the evening, and of course they didn’t invite her, so there’s upset on top of that stress. She has yet to hear them come home, so she just assumes it’ll be a late one. Occasionally, they don’t even bother coming home.

Just after 3, she gives up completely on pretending to do anything productive and decides some cookies are in order. She plods out into the communal kitchen in her fluffy pajamas, not caring about who sees her.

As expected, no one else is around. The kitchen is relatively tidy, surprisingly enough, but she guesses that comes from the lack of use. At least it means she doesn’t have to clean before she bakes.

Pulling up the recipe on her phone, she opens the cupboard designated for herself and pulls out the various ingredients she needs as well as the cups she bought especially for late-night baking. 

It doesn’t take her long to get into the zone all while the stresses and hurt from the previous day roll away. They’ll be forgotten – albeit temporarily – until the next wave of stress starts to drown her, but it’s a nice distraction nevertheless. 

Cups of sugar join sticks of butter, creamed together and an egg added. Then flour, cocoa, and baking soda joins it, mixed together until a dough is formed. She finds herself enjoying it so much that she barely hears the others walk past the door until Veronica comes barging in. 

“Elizabeth! What are you doing up so late?” she all but shouts, no doubt waking up anyone that might’ve been sleeping in the building. 

“It’s Betty,” she mumbles mainly to herself. As she turns around, she smiles her best Cooper smile and gestures to the oven. “Oh, you know, just baking.”

“Oh! Wonderful!” She prances over to Betty, leaning over the bowl. “Ooh la la! Look at that!”

Betty chuckles lightly, holding up two bars of chocolate. “Got this to add.”

Just as she says that, a ginger-haired man speeds past the kitchen door only to speed back when he eyes Veronica. “Ronnie!” he exclaims, obviously almost as drunk as Veronica. “What are you doing in here?”

“Elizabeth here is baking cookies!”

He jumps up and down like an excited toddler. “Can I have one?”

Betty shakes her head, amused. “I haven’t baked them yet but I’ll be sure to save you one for the morning.”

He grins and holds out his hand. “I’m Archie.”

Veronica intercepts Betty from shaking his hand, instead taking it and threading their fingers together. “Now, now, Archiekins. We should leave dear Elizabeth to it.” And with a fit of giggles, they’re gone, leaving Betty to her own devices again.

She gets back to it. This time, it’s the chocolate bars. She chops them into small chunks before dumping the lot into the bowl and folding it through. Then, pulling out the baking tray from the pre-heated oven, she uses an ice cream scoop to make balls of dough onto the tray. 

Proud of her work and significantly more relaxed, she puts them in the oven and sets a timer for twelve minutes. 

It takes approximately three minutes for her to speed-tidy the kitchen, leaving her nine minutes in which she sits at the tiny kitchen table and contemplates life, death, and everything that comes both between and after.

Five minutes into her nine-minute contemplation, there’s a soft knock on the door. She turns around to see the guy who makes ramen for breakfast leaning against the doorframe. She doesn’t know his name as such, but she does know that she’s never seen him without a beanie atop his head and it makes her wonder whether there’s a reason for it. Maybe he’s hiding secrets under there. Or a bald patch. 

Either way, it doesn’t really matter. 

“Hey,” he says with a small smile. “What you doing in here?”

She laughs because that seems to be all anyone is interested in; the confusion that comes with 3 a.m. baking. “Just baking.”

His whole face lights up and he sniffs the air, seemingly choosing to ignore the whole 3 a.m. thing. “Oh yeah, smells good.”

She sends him a quick smile as a thanks, wondering if she should introduce herself, but he seems to beat her to it.

“I don’t think we’ve met properly,” he says as he steps forward into the room, now leaning against the worktop instead. “I’m Jughead.”

Jughead. That’s an unusual name, she thinks. “I’m Betty. Well, Veronica calls me Elizabeth and doesn’t listen to me when I say I prefer Betty.”

“That sounds like Veronica.” His lips lift into a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to correct her.” He pauses, a glint in his eye. “Betty.”

Something stirs within her. It’s the way he says her name, the way he says it with conviction, and it’s that look on his face. It has awakened something within her. “Thanks,” she says awkwardly as she tries to ignore that bubbling feeling. 

He pulls his beanie off, running his fingers through his hair. No secrets underneath there, then. Just a full head of hair – luscious hair, she must admit – that isn’t helping that feeling.

She glances away for a second before clearing her throat. “So are you friends with Veronica?”

He shrugs. “By proxy. Archie is my friend, Veronica is Archie’s girlfriend. And our flatmate, obviously.”

“I just met Archie.” She chuckles. “He wanted a cookie, but Veronica took him away.”

“Sounds about right.” He smiles again. He has a really nice smile, goddammit. “If you hear any weird noises from Veronica’s room, you can blame me. It’s my fault she and Archie met.”

Everything starts to piece itself together in her mind. Jughead connections to Veronica and Archie, why the pair started dating, why the three of them were out tonight. She feels an unusual pang of jealousy, like she’s missed out. Whether he realizes it or not, he sounds oddly fond of Veronica. She must be good for Archie or something, and it seems like the three of them get on really well. It’s not something she’s ever had before. She wishes she could.

She only realizes she hasn’t replied when the timer on her phone goes off. It’s loud, and she would be worried about waking the others if she didn’t already know what two of them were up to. 

Jughead must think it’s her phone ringing. He takes a step back and gestures behind him. “Sorry. I’ll leave you to get that–”

“No!” she interrupts. As she stands up, she turns the timer off and smiles at him. “Cookies are ready.”

Once again, his face lights up. “Cookies?”

She grabs her oven gloves off the hook and pulls the tray out of the oven, placing it on the hob. “Triple chocolate.”

He lets out a small groan that makes her hair stand on edge, and he scoots towards her. “Any going spare?”

Hanging the oven gloves back up, she sits back down in her chair at the table. “Come back in ten minutes or so.”

Flashing her a quick grin, he begins speeding back out of the kitchen but he stops at the door, spinning around to look at her. “I don’t want you to think I’m abandoning you,” he says, hand fiddling with the door handle. “I promise I’m not just after your cookies, Betty.”

She shakes her head and picks up her phone, pretending it doesn’t bother her. It does bother her, perhaps more than it should, but none of that matters; _shouldn’t_ matter. 

He lets out a breathy laugh. “I’m jealous of your pajamas, that’s all.”

She looks down at her outfit as if she'd forgotten what she was wearing. Oh right. Her favorite fluffy pajamas covered in the same orange cat. “Pajamas are a way of life,” she tells him. It’s a joke; it’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out empty, inevitably falling flat. 

Jughead smiles anyway. “I’ll be back in, like, sixty seconds.”

At his mention of her outfit, she realizes she didn’t take much notice of his at first. So as he rushes off with a smile on his face, she’s sure to take a quick glance. Paired with black skinny pants is a red short-sleeved button-up. There are dark suspenders holding his pants up and the shirt has a few buttons undone, enough that she can see a white undershirt. She thinks it’s his _going out_ outfit, one that probably serves as a tool to get him some attention from the opposite sex. 

At that thought, a second unwelcome pang of jealousy runs through her veins. Jealousy of the other women, jealousy because that’s not her. It’s a strange feeling, not only due to being the second time she’s felt it tonight but because it’s rare for her to be jealous. She’s lucky to have what she’s got; it’s something she’s always been taught. Jealousy is an ugly emotion. 

She tries to push any thoughts of the kind out of her head. She can hear her mom scolding her for them, which only serves to bring back all of the stress she’d managed to be rid of by baking. Hopefully being able to eat her creation will soothe her enough to help her get to sleep, too.

True to his word, Jughead speeds back into the kitchen no more than a minute later in his own pajamas. He works, unintentionally, to snap her out of her thoughts and focus on his new – and improved – outfit. Red and black plaid pajama pants and a gray t-shirt sporting an ‘S’. Yet another mystery of Jughead, she thinks. His pajamas aren’t as fluffy as hers, but his beanie does still sit atop his head, which must serve as a way to keep him warm.

“Hey,” he says as he slides into the chair opposite her. “Mine aren’t as cool as yours.”

She laughs at that; a proper laugh. “I can’t say I didn’t notice.”

A slightly awkward silence falls over them, and it’s at that moment that Betty realizes she’s sitting in a communal kitchen past 3 a.m. with a stranger she only knows two things about. Jughead seems _nice_ , he seems more than nice, but he’s a stranger nonetheless. A stranger she’s had weird feelings towards already.

Maybe the combination of stress and exhaustion. Maybe it’s the effect of the night. 

Maybe it’s everything. 

Once again, Jughead’s voice drags her out of her thoughts. “Hey, uh, I guess I never asked: why are you baking in the middle of the night?” And then he rushes to add, “Of course you don’t, um, you don’t have to tell me.”

She meets his eye. There’s something about him that makes her want to tell all. “I had a bad day,” she says honestly. “And I couldn’t get to sleep. Baking helps.”

Looking down, he nods.

“I guess I forgot about the whole” –she gestures vaguely around her– “communal kitchen thing.”

“We were out,” he says suddenly. “Archie, Veronica, and I, I mean.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him she already knew even though it’s not a big deal, so she lets him continue.

“I didn’t want to go, but I don’t like” –he swallows thickly– “staying here alone. I don’t think I’ve ever met the three from across the hall.”

“Me neither,” she whispers although she’s not sure why.

“I’m sorry.” He says it like it’s a conclusion he’s come to, his eyes meeting hers again. “I should’ve made more of an effort with you.”

She sits there, wordlessly staring at him. What can she say to that? That she’s sorry, too? That she wishes she would’ve made more of an effort with _him_? That she wishes she would’ve spoken to him in the mornings when she sees him making ramen for breakfast? Because she does, she _does_ wish all of those things. But it’s not too late; it’s never too late. 

After a moment of silence, she manages to get some words out. “You know… it’s not too late.”

He sends her an uncertain smile. “Really?”

She moves her hand across the table to rest on his. “Really, Jughead.”

Eyes darting between their hands, her eyes, and the cooling cookies, they eventually land back on her. “I’ve heard cookies make a really great _getting to know you_ snack.”

She giggles. “Milk and cookies, eh?”

He grins. “Perfect.”

“Well, as they say, there’s no time like the present.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! thank you for reading <3
> 
> ao3 emails make my day so please leave comments and kudos if you so desire.
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://fallout-mars.tumblr.com/) where i shitpost a lot


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